Out of all the questions on the mind of this great nation, nothing is more pressing than: Are women people?
Look, if the question bothers you, you’re probably just looking to get offended on the internet. Give the nation a goddamn break. It’s actually not that easy of a question.
I’ll explain why.
For one thing, most women do, in fact, think of themselves as people. But what we think about ourselves can be highly subjective. For example, *I* may *think* that I can sing after four glasses of boxed rosé, but opinions on the subject can vary. Ergo, it is presumptuous for women to simply assume these things about themselves.
“Now, now, Natalia — if women are capable of giving birth to people, are they also not people?” You’re probably thinking right now. Still, I’m afraid your logic is flawed. Mollusks grow in shells, but it doesn’t make shells into mollusks. That’s hours of soothing narration by David Attenborough has taught me, and who am I to question that kind of wisdom.
If you don’t believe in science — and plenty of us have reasons to suspect that something is seriously off with science, especially because it can’t even decide if Pluto is a planet or not — might as well turn to God and/or gods.
Now, I’m not one for reading too much into religious texts, mostly because they are complicated and depressing and involve a lot of food/hygiene rituals that strike me as more appropriate for a time with no indoor plumbing and reliable refrigerators — but while agricultural standards have changed since the times of the prophets, women have pretty much stayed the same. Sure, more of us are openly trans nowadays, or else identifying as non-binary, or whatever, but the very designation of “woman,” i.e. “creatures that are heckled in the street” is not that different. And as far as I can tell, religious texts make the argument that women are a special kind of people, which in itself is pretty interesting. Because what is “special,” anyway? Is it a good kind of “special,” as in, “a lunch special with six extra chicken nuggets”? Or a bad kind of “special,” as in, “special prosecutor”? If we can’t define it, we can’t legally be sure of women’s status as human beings or non-human beings.
The legal question of women’s humanity, naturally, brings me to the Supreme Court. We are a society of laws, after all. Yes, they are mostly laws written by white men for white men, but don’t go hating on that — white men can’t help it if they were the only ones who could write back then.
There’s been a lot of fuss over the Supreme Court lately, because a nominee that the GOP is trying to rush through having previously blocked the former president’s choice (sure, the GOP may not be morally or ethically consistent, but like I said, how can we expect consistency in a world where we don’t know what planets are and biocentrism is the only theory that can sort of, maybe reconcile relativity with quantum physics???) may very well get to decide whether or not women are, in fact, human beings with bodily integrity and the like.
Plenty of people are, for some reason, very upset about this. But if both logic, science, and religion seem to fail us on account of deciding whether or not women are people, why not let a great carpool dad and alleged perjurer give it a go? Seriously, we may otherwise be all out of options, and I’d rather have the question settled.
At the very least, being officially downgraded to less than human would mean less pressure on me personally. Sure, mom, I may not be an international lawyer like you wanted me to be (what the hell is an “international lawyer” anyway?), but what did you expect if I am not entirely human after all? Yah, officer, I probably shouldn’t be playing Soviet pop music so loudly on a Tuesday night, but my non-human ears just happen to perceive sound differently.
Honestly, we ladies should learn to stop worrying and love the patriarchy. There will be less difficult questions to ask. First we do away with our humanity, then we can go ahead and get rid of the question of owning property, and later on we can just be fembots so fembots don’t have to be invented anymore, just as Ross Douthat intended.
Photo: Charles Edward Miller